Movie Review: Tolkien, directed by Dome Karukoski
(Four Stars)
“Where you follow the rhythms of language, I have to tell you, Mr. Tolkien, I’ve never come across anything like it.”
This movie will bomb. Too intellectual and idea driven, like Tolkien’s stories. Little to no action. Solid performances by a cast of unknowns.
“No … you deserve magic.”
Having read much by and about Tolkien, I can attest that this accurately represents the formative years of the greatest story teller of the twentieth century, despite the Tolkien Estate disavowing the film. In fact, reviewing Tolkien’s biography reveals Karukoski et al. took many liberties with fact, hence my labeling this as historical fiction
“There are cakes.”
Like Disney’s treatment of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, all reference to Tolkien’s faith was excised. Tolkien wrote, “We have come from God and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man ascribe to the state of perfection that he knew before the fall.”
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.”
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